Outsourcing Is Business As Usual

I was looking at the agenda for the Shared Services Outsourcing Network (SSON) Eastern European conference, which is taking place next month, and I noticed how one of the opening sessions is focused on business transformation. In particular, the session is exploring the Global Business Services model that is now so familiar to any executive familiar with outsourcing as a business strategy.

The conference looks interesting, but in my opinion the focus on outsourcing and the idea of global business services as anything other than business as usual feels a bit dated. Look at the rebranding of Professional Outsourcing magazine into Intelligent Sourcing for an example of what I mean. There is no longer anything special in deploying a global network of services or in the use of specialist suppliers. Sourcing expertise really is now just business as usual.

A decade ago things were rather different. Outsourcing was a strategy that demanded attention and endless books were published. I even wrote several of them myself. But if a major conference is devoting a 40-minute opening keynote session to talking about global business services then surely it must be important?

Forget business and think about your personal life. Have you ever questioned where Waze came from? Or Angry Birds? Or Skype? When we use software or tools in our personal life we don’t think about it as global services, yet these systems originated from Israel, Finland, and Estonia.

Tablets and phones from all over the world use software and applications from everywhere. The App store allows anyone to create tools and to make them available to a global audience. However, we rarely stop to think about this as a triumph of global services.

So why do we need to be talking about it at a business conference? If I need a partner with CRM expertise I will find the best company regardless of where they are based. Companies today are structured very differently to those of twenty, or even ten, years ago. Many people may be located in the same office, working together to the same targets, but receiving pay from different organisations depending on their expertise and role in the team.

What has really changed in the past decade is this concept of the edge of the organisation – in-house employees and contractors. Today it is far more fluid. You don’t work for the company or work for an outsourcing contractor. You all work together.

Most managers that need to lead teams already understand this. We don’t need a conference keynote to explain the obvious.